A Slip in Time (3 page)

All the same, there was something not quite right. Fadge could feel it in his bones. He peered towards the end of the alley, where they'd left Rusty on guard. ‘Where's Rusty gone?'

‘He's still there.'

‘I can't see him.'

‘Course you can't. Rusty's the best in the business.' That was true. The way Rusty lurked, passers-by rarely took him for anything more than their own shadows. The Masher gave a low whistle and a sound came back like rats suddenly disturbed, then settling again. That was Rusty. Rusty could do rats, cats, dogs, horses and half a dozen birds more lifelike than the real thing. It was just the human voice he could never quite get right.

‘Up you go!' said the Masher. ‘We haven't got all night.'

Fadge found himself lifted up and swivelled halfway through the narrow window before he knew it. He stretched out his arms into the dark and found the top of a cupboard or a table. A quick wriggle and a handspring down to the floor. And he was in. Standing in somebody's larder by the look of it in the pale moonlight.

Fadge made straight for the door, and found it locked.

He went back to the window. ‘Door's locked, Masher. We're out of luck. Can you
help me out?'

‘You stay there!'

‘What?'

‘Stay there and do as I say. Look around you. Can you see a chicken?'

‘A chicken, Masher?' Not content with stealing Fadge's dinner, the Masher was going to all this trouble to steal someone else's? ‘What sort of a chicken?'

‘Plucked. All ready for cooking. Look around you, Fadge!'

‘I'm looking, Masher! Get out of the light. I'm looking.'

‘It's there, Fadge! It's got to be!' The Masher, on tiptoe, pressed his face up close to the open window.

Of course the chicken was there. Fadge had seen it the moment he dropped to the floor. There wasn't much else. A few jars. A few vegetables. Half a loaf of bread. Fadge looked round in vain for a knife to cut it with and something to spread on it. Jam. Butter. A bit of beef dripping would be favourite. Nothing. He tried the door again.

‘Fadge? What you doing, Fadge?'

‘Nothing.'

‘You found it?'

‘What if I have? What's it worth?'

‘Just give it to me. Pass it to me out of the window.'

‘No.'

‘All right. Sixpence?'

‘I reckon it's worth more than that,' Fadge said thoughtfully.

‘How much more?'

‘Make me an offer.'

Then suddenly, ‘Masher!' Rusty rasped in the Masher's ear.

The Masher, taken by surprise, somehow managed to crack his head on the top of the window frame and his chin on the sill, both at the same time.

‘I gave the signal, Masher, but you never heard me! They've come back!'

Behind him, Fadge could hear footsteps coming through the house, and voices.

‘Help me out!' pleaded Fadge.

‘Give me that chicken.'

‘What about me?'

‘Give us the chicken, then we'll help you out.'

‘You won't.'

‘We will!'

The feet and the voices were just the other side of the door. The key was turning in the lock.

‘It's both of us, or nothing!' Fadge stuffed the chicken up his shirt and leapt for the window.

Two pairs of hands grasped his wrists. But another four hands now had hold of his ankles.

There was a very short tug of war. Fadge and the chicken together were never going to fit through that window.

Fadge heard Jack's voice. ‘It's all right, Fadge! I've told him! I told him they made you do it!'

But the Masher and Rusty still held him fast. Fadge kicked and wriggled and yelled fit to wake the dead three streets away.

As the first window slammed open and a head poked out to ask who was being horribly murdered on their doorstep, the Masher and Rusty let go and ran for it.

Fadge shot back into the larder like a human cannonball, and landed on something soft. The chicken soared into the air, hovered for
a moment near the ceiling, then plummetted down to perch on his chest. ‘Oooff!' Fadge lay for a moment, letting his arms and legs shrink back to their proper size.

‘Gerroff!' growled Jack, from underneath him.

‘Well, well!' said Dr Watson. ‘Isn't this exciting!'

Roughly ten minutes later the three of them stood round the kitchen table, staring hard at the chicken from three different sides. It didn't look too bad, considering what it had been through. There was stuffing dribbling from one end, and the left wing stuck out at an odd angle, as if the chicken was resting on its elbow, waiting for them to make up their minds.

‘This friend of yours – is he specially fond of chicken?' asked Dr Watson, frowning.

Fadge shook his head.

‘Anyway,' said Jack, ‘he couldn't have been hungry. He'd just eaten Fadge's dinner.' He had the creepy feeling the chicken was looking at him, sizing him up. He edged out of its line of sight (not that it could see anything,
having no head) and the others followed him, processing round the table.

The doctor twirled one end of his moustache, giving it a lop-sided look, as if it was starting to come unstuck. ‘Could it have been a joke, do you think? Say he was put up to it by someone I know. Medical students. Yes? No.' He shook his head. ‘I would have been sorry to lose it. Chickens don't come cheap.'

Jack toyed with the idea of making some crack about chickens not coming cheap, only chicks going ‘cheep'. But thought better of it.

‘My housekeeper –' the doctor began. ‘Hrrm!' He cleared his throat. ‘I'll come clean. I have no housekeeper. Can't afford it. Mrs Hudson's very good, though. She comes in twice a week. The rest I manage for myself, but it doesn't do to let people know.'

‘Bad for the image?' suggested Jack. ‘Like going out without your hat?'

‘Exactly! Which is why you caught me polishing my brass plate under cover of darkness. I can't afford to eat chicken, either, as a rule. But this is a special occasion. A friend of mine – another doctor – is passing through tomorrow, on his way to take up a practice
down in Southsea. Bit of a celebration, yes? I asked Mrs Hudson to buy me a chicken and leave it ready to pop in the oven.' He gave the chicken a doubtful look. ‘I suppose it'll still be all right, once it's cooked.'

‘I think p'raps you ought to wash it,' said Jack.

The doctor looked even more doubtful. ‘What about the stuffing? Excellent stuffing Mrs Hudson makes! Don't want it waterlogged.'

‘You could scoop it out,' suggested Fadge. ‘Stuff it back in after.'

‘Good thinking!'

The doctor rooted round until he found a spoon and a basin. He started scraping out the chicken while Fadge held it. Jack took charge of the basin, tipping it underneath the gaping neck, so not a scrap of Mrs Hudson's excellent stuffing would be lost.

At the third scoop, there was a ‘chink' of spoon on metal.

‘What's this?' said Dr Watson. He bent down and peered inside.

‘This' seemed to be something solid mixed in with the squidgy stuffing. A glint of gold. A
gold chain! A gold chain leading back inside the bird. Gently the doctor drew it out and gently … gently …

Fadge and Jack watched open-mouthed. It was as if that chicken was laying a golden egg. Egg-shaped it was, but flatter, and studded with red and green stones. A golden pendant on a golden chain.

‘That's what they were after!' breathed Jack. ‘Not the chicken at all.'

‘They ought to have told me,' muttered Fadge.

The doctor washed the pendant clean, holding it over the sink in his left hand, while he worked the pump briskly with his right.

‘But how did they know?' demanded Jack. ‘How did it get in there?'

Fadge said, ‘Can I hold it? Please?'

He took it reverently, but firmly, so as not to drop it. As if he was afraid it might break. ‘Gold!' he thought. Gold and jewels beyond his wildest dreams. He rubbed his fingers over the pendant, feeling the shape of it, the warmth of it. No more sleeping in the cold. No more being hungry. Then he felt a tiny ‘click' and the pendant sprang open. It wasn't
a pendant; it was a locket.

Inside was what might have been a portrait, if you looked at it from far enough off (like halfway down the street in a bad light). Close to, it was nothing but a collection of smudges, pink and black and purple streaked with gold.

‘Well, well!' said the doctor. ‘What are we to make of that? May I?' He took back the locket, and started examining it from every angle, holding it up to the light.

‘P'raps some kid did it for his mum,' suggested Jack, remembering all his pictures from playschool that Mum still kept. Cringemaking stuff.

‘Perhaps,' nodded the doctor. He peered a bit more, then, ‘Hm!' he said thoughtfully. He snapped the locket shut and slipped it in his waistcoat pocket.

‘Hey!' protested Fadge, indignantly, but faintly.

‘What do we do now?' asked Jack.

‘Why,' said the doctor, ‘we must set about finding the owner.'

‘What about finders keepers?' demanded Fadge.

‘Shut up, Fadge,' said Jack, not unkindly.
‘You can't just keep a thing if there's any chance of finding the owner.'

‘How are we going to do that, then?' Fadge bit back scornfully.

‘I think,' said Dr Watson, ‘a visit to the butcher's shop is called for.'

So off they went, after a short delay while they all hunted for the doctor's hat again. Then there was a quick detour down the back alley, so Fadge could collect his broom.

Now and again, as they went along, Fadge thought he saw a movement in the shadows, a thickening of the darkness that might be Rusty. On the other hand, if he thought it might be, then it probably wasn't. Which didn't make him feel any better.

The butcher's shop was tiny, with sawdust strewn on the tiled floor for mopping up the blood, and festooned down either side with dead meat; like stepping into Bluebeard's wardrobe. At the far end stood a thick, pine table scored over and over by the wickedlooking cleaver in the butcher's hand. Jack and Fadge were quite happy to wait outside the open shop front, while the doctor went in and asked about the chicken sold to Mrs Hudson that afternoon.

Nothing wrong with his chickens! declared the butcher. (
Thunk!
agreed the cleaver, slicing off a lamb chop and sinking itself in the table underneath.) Show him the customer who'd ever had a word to say against them! Mrs Hudson? (The cleaver pulled itself free.
Dr Watson took a step back.) Been shopping with him these eight years – the cleaver drew a figure of eight in the air – had Mrs H, and never a word of complaint. So what if said chicken had spent a moment or two on the ground during the excitement? Hadn't he dusted it off most carefully? And knocked sixpence off the asking price? (The cleaver was fairly dancing now, conducting an invisible orchestra.)

What excitement? Ah! Pity they hadn't been there to see it. Late afternoon, it was. Suddenly, at the top of the street – the cleaver became one arm of a signpost – a woman screams, ‘Stop! Thief!' This big lad dressed in red comes running down the street – knocks over the outside table (
swish!
went the cleaver) – together with the chicken that had Mrs Hudson's name on it. And the big lad – most polite, most thoughtful – picks the chicken up and dusts it down and puts it into the butcher's own hands before running on (
swash!
went the cleaver). The hue and cry caught up with him not much further down the street, searched him – nothing! Seems they'd got the wrong boy. (The cleaver rested for a moment,
balancing upright on the workbench.) Hue and cry? he says. What hue and cry? He was just running as fast as he could to fetch the doctor to his poor sick granny.

‘Granny Smith!' muttered Jack.

‘Aye!' said the butcher. ‘That's right. That was the name. Do you know her? He must have thought that chicken was all right. He was back soon after, asking to buy it. Said a bowlful of chicken broth would be just the thing to set the old lady right.'

‘But by then you'd sold it?' suggested Dr Watson.

‘Taken it out the back to put the stuffing in, ready for Mrs H to collect. I offered him another, but he'd set his heart on that one. Very cut up about it, he was.'

‘I bet he was,' muttered Jack, as soon as they were out of sight and sound of the butcher and his cleaver. ‘He was the thief! That's where he hid the loot when they were after him.'

The doctor sighed. ‘I must say I'm disappointed in Mrs Hudson. I always thought… She let me go on thinking that she made that stuffing herself. An old family
recipe. Ah, well!'

Fadge patted him sympathetically on the elbow. (It would have been the shoulder, if he could have reached it.) ‘Life, eh?'

‘As you say, Fadge. Such is life!' The doctor took out the locket and peered at it again in the dim light. ‘It seems all we have to do now is find the lady! Why would a woman wearing a valuable locket be wandering on foot in this part of London?' he pondered. ‘Unless –'

Fadge tugged at his sleeve, ‘Put it away!' Glancing round, every shadow, every stray patch of mist, seemed to hold a promise of Rusty lurking in it. ‘Let's get moving,' he said. And without waiting to see if they followed, he set off the way the cleaver had pointed.

‘Good thinking!' murmured the doctor. ‘Return to the scene of the crime, eh? See what that tells us!'

At the top of the road, they found nothing but a T-junction, with another narrow, dark street running across.

Behind them came a sudden yowl that might have been fighting alleycats, if you didn't know Rusty. It sent a shiver down Fadge's spine.

‘Which way now?' pondered the doctor.